Berceuse
by ariadne-chan
Summary: Caress the strings and the violin gives you something, she tells him after a while. But what it is she wants, he wishes he knew.


**yaay! this is something i've written for the livejournal competition. prompt: melody. i had mad fun although i didn't get to win. i was short of voters sniff sniff. anyway, cheers to the people who have commented and voted for this entry. see you guys next time. ja ne! ^-^**

---

The cry of the violin wafts through the quad—the full moon views the scene and silhouettes the magical pair. He watches her delicate fingers dance over the strings, her other hand gracefully holding the bow.

"Your music. It's beautiful."

She looks up at him and stares in surprise. Her fingers go still on the bow.

The bow glides over the golden strings. Something simple a child might have played, or it might have been the law of the cosmos. Something random or genius, or both at the same time. It stirs a primal memory of nothingness as it echoes and reaches his ears. His voice, or hers, or the violin's—he can't be sure.

It has been five years since he last saw her. And tonight, he wants to hear her play. He lowers his voice and holds her gaze. "Keep playing."

She doesn't.

It gives her refuge from the cold, she tells him in the meantime, as though an explanation were needed as to her continued kindness to the instrument. He wonders if she realizes the full weight of her words, if she sees the parallels he does. Caress the strings and the violin gives you something, she tells him after a while. But what it is she wants, he wishes he knew.

He wishes she would think of him like she does of her violin, even if his actions in the past have not exactly warranted such treatment. Unaware that she had once wished the same thing.

She raises the violin to play another piece—the one they shared under the moon one fateful night during the Training Camp. It is something hard-wired into his person, vibrating within him like a tuning fork in the key of C. He wonders if she is playing the piece for him.

He wonders, because she is the reason why never tires of its simplicity.

For a moment it seems as though she shares his secret. She stops to smile at him, like a child, and realizes there is a smile planted firmly, however slight, in his silent lips as well.

---

The rain drums in a steady 4/4 time against the window. He held his instrument close—the violin that _made _his music—the violin that _held_ his memories—the first of which being the ideal scene in which he first met his music. He'd been five. He can still remember how he had marveled at the varnish reflecting sheets of light, how the light slanted against the thick mahogany color—the slender, curved body, the light airy strings almost whispering, singing into the silent air—he was entranced. Violin lessons became a constant…music had been a savior. He sighs as he reaches out to tuck the violin under his chin, supporting it with his fingers arched over the neck and positioning the bow above the strings.

He began to play.

Vitali's Chaconne flowed from his fingers, and the notes are lost, wandering about in thirds and sixths, undulating, fluctuating—settling back into another attempt, bolder and more audacious, at crafting the melody.

It descends at tempo rubato, until the melody crashes in its wrenching, expansive end, and everything is forced to the surface, raw and beating. The piece changed—it was an original opus, parts parallel to that of Schubert's. Except this song is nothing like any other—just as she was unlike any other. His eyelids served as a canvas where he viewed each moment with her and wove it into stunning melody—each moment with her that brought out the music in him.

He felt her before she spoke; he could see her though he did not turn to look. She is standing in the doorway, his piece a siren to his siren, an irony of song.

She crosses the room and stands in front of him, watching as his fingers told their story. He remembers the time when he first saw her—outside the practice room window when she had called his music beautiful. The notes begin to melt and the melody changes, this very moment depicted in music. For a moment there were no words between them—just their song—for the notes he played were the words he couldn't say out loud. And then she spoke.

"It's very beautiful, Tsukimori-kun. I feel like I've heard it before, but I'm pretty sure I haven't. Who's it by?"

He did not look up—the music possessed him, climbing higher and higher before spiraling down in a flurry of passion and determination.

"Tsukimori-kun?" she asks again. "Who's it by?"

"No one," came his soft reply.

"Ehh? But it must be by someone."

The coda meanders, indecisive, but it finds, like all others, its resolution.

"Anou, what's it called?"

"…Kahoko."

---

***berceuse: lullaby  
*betareader: annalisemarie99**


End file.
